Cecily Sommers puts an extraordinary amount of care and thought and energy into PUSH every year. I’m enjoying the fruits of that labor of love again now, as the conference gets rolling.

Yesterday Cecily started us off with several performers, including one who had done a wonderful spoken word act at PUSH several years ago. Since then, Desdamona has broadened and deepened her craft to become more of a singer/songwriter. Here’s an article on her in MPR and her MySpace site.

Clyde Prestowitz, author of Rogue Nation and part of the Reagan Administration, opened some great lines of thinking about the way the US has overreached. Now we’re hearing from a very entertaining and interesting Polish economist, Grzegorz Kolodko, who is making clear how precarious the US’s dominance is today. Now Michael Barnett, international relations expert from the local Hubert H. Humphrey Institute is describing the Israeli-Palestinian debacle as a mutual suicide pact that can’t be avoided. Ouch.